Finally some spare time to write something! J
We are already half way through Mississippi, in one of the best motels we have been so far, and I’m writing from my room that I share with Dan, Benito, and Nick. Well…Nick is actually never in the room, as he is always super super busy planning the route for us and all the rest.
The daily schedule is pretty tight: wake up at 5, put the bag on the van at 5:30, place your chamois butt’r, and go.
Every day we ride between 70 and 90 miles. I wish they would be kilometers!Then we have some day off, and we ride for about 40 miles. Of course we have some century days and some times we just mess it up and we make a century day out of an 80 or 90 mile day.
On the ride we see a lot of animals—mainly dead ones. There’s any kind of: deer, raccoons, squirrels, snakes, turtles, and any kind of birds (cardinals are so pretty!). Lately we have seen some armadillos, too.We have” sweep” duties pretty randomly. Sweeping means “being the last ones,” and you usually do it in couples. It’s pretty boring if I have to be honest, especially because people may get off the route and you never know if you are still at the very end.
The past two days have been pretty intense because we have been riding about 95 miles per day and sleeping in camping under the rain.
Two days ago, the cue sheet was very confusing and almost everybody got lost. I personally did some 10 extra miles (let’s say it was a cue shit). But on the top of it we had an extra cue on the sheet (just like a ghost track on your favorite CD or a bonus level of Mario Bros) that was a 15 mile ride inside the park to get to the campground.
During the evening we heard rumors that the north crew had a massive sag day (just 7 riders out of 20 were actually riding), and that was the last element that the group needed to have a massive sag day, too.
I’ve been one of the 8 riders that have been riding anyway, and it has been a nice ride: 67 Fahrenheit. … We are going to dream about those temperatures in Texas.
People in the group are great. I love them. There’s a little bit of everything. From 22-year-old girls to a over 70-year-old guy. People from every side of North America, and more. I really would like to paint a profile of any of them. … Some of them are pretty fast. Being fast is pretty useful if you wanna have some spare time. If you wanna have time to write this stuff, you’ll better ride as fast as you can.
We eat a lot. We eat all the time. And then we eat some more. We eat while riding, and we eat when we stop. I’ve been eating even under the shower, and I’m trying to figure out how to eat while I’m sleeping.

I eat a lot and I go number 2 a lot; you can’t imagine.
People are also paying the consequences of doing a couple of things at one time for the lack of time.
Brianne, for example, was dressing up while riding, and the sleeve of her jacket got caught in the back brake and she kissed the asphalt.
But the worst happened to Daniel. He is my same pace and we get along very well, so we were riding together pretty often and swimming in the lakes. But one time he was probably trying to sleep and ride at the same time and he touched my back wheel with his front wheel and went down. Broken collarbone.

Sigh! I’m missing him on the ride, even if he’s always following us with the van. Now he has just prepared two apple pies! Isn’t he the best?